“My mother, she kept me real. She taught me what she remembered of her life, values, morals, what was wrong about my father and the life I grew up in.”
“How old was she?”
“When she was taken?”
I nodded.
“Eighteen.”
I lowered my head, and the rain hit the tip of my nose. God, that must have been terrifying and horrible, and she was there for so long, and here I was moaning about fifteen days.
“My mother had been planning to get us out for years. Finally an opportunity came, and she took it. We escaped.”
I asked the question that I was afraid to ask. “Did you want to leave?”
He closed his eyes for a minute. “It’s all I knew. Despite the stories my mother told me, that place was where I spent sixteen years of my life.” The back of his hand stroked my cheek, and I wanted to lean into it, instead I pulled away. “Still, I hated that place. Every second of it. I fought to stay away from everything else, but I saw what went on there. The girls, the hurt, violence, the drugs.
“My mother and I needed money after we escaped, so I continued the fighting, but I never liked it. I did what had to be done, Emily. That was one thing I learned to survive my father, determination and the will to do what you have to. Giving up doesn’t exist for me.
“That’s how he found me. He tracked fighting circuits, sending his men to look for me. Took him eight years, but word reached him about an undefeated Sculpt, and he showed up at one of my fights.”
“The night I asked you to help me.”
He nodded.
“Is that why you moved up your tour date?”
“Yes. I had to leave. I had to get out of the fighting world, but it was too late. I thought once I refused to fight for him, he’d leave it alone, and he did for a month or so. I should’ve known better. Raul gets what he wants. And he wanted me fighting for him.” He looked up and met my eyes. “I would’ve done it for however long he wanted me to if he’d promised to leave you alone.”
My breath hitched. He couldn’t do this to me. He couldn’t make it better. I wasn’t sure I could handle the truth.
He lowered his head while he ran his hand through his hair. “But you don’t know him. He doesn’t work that way. I knew that. Anyone who knows him does. He finds your weakness and destroys you with it.”
“And I was your weakness.”
“You and my mother. Raul had men on her, if I didn’t show up with you in Mexico, she was to be killed and not just a gunshot to the head. Raul’s kills are long, slow, and agonizing.” That was why he never attempted to take off with me when we drove to Mexico. “Before I saw you, after you were taken by Alfonzo ... I contacted Deck. He was out of the country, but he dropped everything to come back. He told me what I had to do and what needed to go down. Deck managed to get my mother out from under Raul’s men within four days.”
I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath until I let it go when he said that. He continued, “That’s when I had to be really careful with how I treated you. Raul knew my mother was gone from his clutches and all he had was you for leverage. He didn’t trust me, and I had to convince him that I was there because I wanted to fight and ... and that you meant nothing to me except a slave I wanted to fuck. If he knew how much I cared ... it was the only way to save you. I needed to give Deck time.”
“But why didn’t you tell me? We were alone most of the time. You could have told me, Logan.”
“Answer me this, Emily. If I’d told you all this, would you have feared me? Would you have trembled? Would you have had that look of fear in your eyes?”
I knew the answer. No. I would’ve feared the place and Raul and Alfonzo, but I’d always feel protected by Logan. But none of it really mattered, because I still felt like I’d been ripped apart and was trying to put my pieces back together. “I feel broken.”
His hand slipped into my hair. “We’ll fix this.”
I turned my head to avoid his touch. “Sculpt.” I saw him flinch when I avoided using his real name. “It’s too late. We can’t go back. I can’t. I’m sorry ... God, what you grew up with, what happened to you and your mother ... it’s horrible, unthinkable, but I ... Sculpt, I want to move on with my life, and you’re a reminder of what I want to forget.”
“Mouse—”
“Maybe it is what you had to do. But when I look at you now, I’m not sure who I see, the man I fell in love with or the cold, expressionless man that watched me suffer and made me fear him.” I took a deep breath and said the words I needed to say to save my already damaged heart. “What I’m sure of ... is that I’m better without either one.”
I turned, slipped under his arm, and ran through the raging rain. I heard him shouting my name and curse several times before I reached the house. I went into my room, shut the door and leaned up against it, my chest heaving in and out and my nerves shooting off like the Fourth of July.
After I caught my breath I took off my soaking wet breeches and shirt then dried myself off and slipped on jeans without even searching for underwear. I had no doubt Logan would come after me. My running would not deter him from finishing what he started. I grabbed my pink T-shirt from my bed and pulled it over my head just as the door swung open.
Logan stood in the doorway with his hands braced on either side. He looked determined and impenetrable. Water droplets fell off the tips of his hair, and his T-shirt was plastered to his broad, hard chest. There was no softness in his eyes; he was hard and determined with glistening moisture clinging to his skin.
He stole my breath away, and for a moment I couldn’t move. It was his authority that made my body hyperaware. It was like this basic need in me begging to be fulfilled.
“Maybe I’m like him. Because I’d have killed, murdered ... I would’ve done it all if he’d sold you. I’d have done those things to get you back. Yes, I watched you being whipped, fondled, dragged away, knowing you were going to be tortured. And yes, my own father held a gun to your head and I had to walk away or risk him killing you, just to make a point.” His hands tightened on the wood frame of the door. “And I’d do it again. Because there was no fuckin’ way he was taking you from me. You get that, Emily? That’s what this is about. I did what had to be done. You survived. And I’m telling you right now, growing up with him, knowing what that shit was like, you wouldn’t have survived being sold, and I wasn’t going to let that happen. So, I did what I had to do, and so did you.”